The magical combination of Dahl and illustrator Blake makes this a winning combination. Inside this big picture book is a bonus envelope packed with Dahl-inspired booklets, games and activity sheets to encourage budding storytellers. Read Mrs Twit's recipe for Bird Pie, become a giant expert with The BFG's Spotter's Guide, and discover Willy Wonka's Golden Ticket. Indulge your love of Roald Dahl's magical, madcap worlds by diving into your favourite stories, retold through letters, photographs, magic books, recipes and newspaper clippings and what inspired Dahl to write his stories. 'In an early first draft, the BFG was described as wearing black trousers tucked into black boots. However, Roald realised that this wasn't the right look, and he sent a pair of his own Norwegian-style sandals to Quentin Blake as inspiration for alternative footwear. The rest is history!' And pictured is a photograph of said footwear, Blake's illustrations, snippets and clippings and photographs and drawings and a whole scrapbook of fantastical foxy features. 80 very large pages, colour. 28.7 x 22.2cm, ages 6-8 years or avid collectors of children's books.

In this exceptional and popular series of Haynes Owners' Workshop Manuals, this volume covers the Bentley 4.5 Litre all models including Blower, giving an insight into the design, engineering, maintenance and ownership of W. O. Bentley's legendary Le Mans winner. Tim Birkin's chase of Rudi Caracciola's Mercedes-Benz at Le Mans in 1930 is one of the most stirring stories in motor racing history. Here top race car engineer Andy Brown has contributed a detailed examination of the car's anatomy, illustrated with original factory drawings and numerous detailed photographs. There are memories from Bentley's leading period drivers and mechanics, and interviews with many involved in preparing and racing these iconic cars today. There is a driver's view and how contemporary drivers felt about the car including the thoughts of Sir Henry Birkin, 'Sammy' Davis and Dr Dudley Benjafield. There is the engineer's view, restoration and historic racing projects and outline histories of the individual cars raced by the factory. But best of all is the superb gallery of images, huge colour photographs, archive images and postcards, workshop and factory images such as Neil Davies' extensive machine shop and a Blower displayed on the Vanden Plas stand at the 1930 Olympian Motor Show, and proud owners like Charles Amherst Villiers reliving old memories. We also discover that it was actually Michael Burne who wrote Full Throttle at the age of 19. Hundreds of colour and other illustrations, 160pp, 21.6 x 28cm.

You won't find a better value for money collection of the very best in tattooing including what's hot and what's new from such luminaries of the art as the Buena Vista Tattoo Club, Adam Collins, Jeff Gogue, Dan Gold, Kari Barba and more. With brief biographies of each tattoo artist, the book showcases over 700 tattoos in full colour by over 80 tattoo artists from the USA, UK, the rest of Europe, Australia and Japan. Body art and tattooing have come a long, long way in the last 20 years and this mammoth book printed on heavyweight black paper does justice to an entire worldwide gallery of colourful designs, images and entire scenes depicted directly on to human skin. Mottos and slogans way beyond LOVE and HATE, here are Samurai warriors, intricate Aztec, flower, animals, Indians, flames, skulls, beautiful women, Celtic crosses and extraordinarily artistic depictions of real people including Jesus with a crown of thorns, babies, Vargas-style girls, dragons and devils. 448 glossy pages, softback. Colour.
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From the Daily Telegraph's Pet Agony Aunt, Celia Haddon is a reputed lover and worshipper of cats with a number of anthologies in their honour. Here her bestselling book is almost an instruction manual for cats on how to deal with their bumbling humans. 'They force their attention on us. This inter-species harassment is abuse. Walk away from it with dignity.' Cats should rub their hair onto every surface in their home to help their humans deal with the fact that they are sadly handicapped by being almost hairless. 'Most humans would starve in the wild. They can't mouse.' 'They ruin meat. Only a small minority, the most sophisticated humans, have the good taste to eat it raw like we do.' A teeny 96 page softback gift book. Illus.

Sub-titled 'Poems and Prose to Rewild the Spirit' here is a book of timeless, irrepressible, rebel song. With global pandemics, economic collapse, the climate emergency, species extinction, war, genocide and social injustice all interconnected, how do we face our fears? This galvanising collection of poems spans 4,000 years of human history, ranging from Nikolai Duffy's Against Metaphor and Lord Byron's Darkness, to Allen Ginsberg's evocative Sunflower Sutra, William Shakespeare's Ariel's Song, John Clare's The Badger, Robert Herrick's Two Daffodils, Li Bo's Drinking Alone Under the Moon, W. H. Davies' The Kingfisher and Robinson Jeffers' Carmel Point: 'The extraordinary patience of things!... We must unhumanise our views a little, and become confident as the rock emotion that we were made from.' With index of poets and first lines, beautiful big clear layout and design, this is an inspiring anthology to lift your spirits. 176pp.

'If you're lucky enough to go to Fontevrault Abbey near Chinon in France, you can pay your respects to Eleanor of Aquitaine, who died in 1204. There is a splendid carving which shows her reading even though she is dead, while her husband King Henry II appears to be lying beside her wondering if he locked the front door.' Here are many amuse-bouches for the mind, a whole year's worth of entertainment to dip into, with quotes from famous authors and a miscellany of history and information beginning with New Year celebrations in Babylon 2300BC, the Chinese New Year, and the poem of the month January by Edith Nesbit. There are resolutions, Dr Elizabeth Blackwell becoming Britain's first woman doctor and Maria Montessori opening her first school. On 5th February 1848 Belle Starr, the notorious American outlaw known as the Bandit Queen, was born. No one was ever charged with her murder. Dandara was an Afro-Brazilian warrior who committed suicide on 6th February 1694. The entries can be a few pages long to a few lines long covering April Fools, fishy festivals, the rules of mullet tossing, revolutionary women, a quick Caesar trivia quiz, National Aviation Day 19th August, the suffragists and politicians. Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to run for the President of the United States, was born on 23rd September 1838 and the Chinese revolutionary and feminist writer Qiu Jin was born on 8th November 1875. 4th December is the International Day of Banks and the cosmetics empire businesswoman Elizabeth Arden was born on 31st December 1881. Why the Almanac has 2021 on the front you should ask the publisher, because this fun slightly feminist compendium can be dipped into over and over as we enjoy our lovely friend Sandys gentle humour, excellent research and QI facts. 360pp, line art.

Volume one for beginners to intermediate level designed to give a sense of achievement and most importantly enjoyment. There are eight stories in a variety of exciting genres from science fiction and crime to history and thriller introducing a wide range of new vocabulary including the thousand most frequent words in Italian. It will all help you progress confidently. There are authentic spoken dialogues to help you learn conversational expressions and approve your speaking ability and accessible grammar so that you learn new structures naturally in these carefully curated stories. There is a glossary for bolded words in each text, a bilingual word list, full plot summary and comprehension questions after each chapter. There are tips on how to read effectively and a six-step reading process encouraging us to look at the illustration and read the chapter title and think about what the story might be about without stopping to look up all the words but simply following the plot on your first read through before going back and studying the story and language in more depth. 'Take time to focus on all that you have understood and congratulate yourself.' The first two short stories are titled La Pizza Pazza and La Creatura. 208pp, illustrated paperback in the Teach Yourself popular series.

Take a minute to answer these questions - what's the average number of sexual partners? What proportion of your country are immigrants? What does it cost to raise a child? Do you think teenage girls are getting pregnant at an alarming rate or that a large percentage of the prison population are immigrants? This brilliant investigation by the Head of Ipsos Mori Social Research Institute analyses the role of social media and fact-checking in this post-truth age. In the final chapter he gives a list of ten useful things we can do to manage ourselves. Brexit and Donald Trump, Facebook, Google, climate change, educational levels, political misdirection and disengagement, wishful and wrongful thinking, filtering our worlds, he looks at worldwide worry and how we should manage our misperceptions. With useful statistics and questions and answers, graphs and pie charts, in these days when we probably no longer trust the clergy, then journalists and least of all politicians, can we trust our own education and perception? Much food for thought. 304pp in paperback.

Rattle of Bones, The Horror from the Mound, Skull-Face, Graveyard Rats, Wolfshead, The Thing on the Roof, Sea Curse, The Cairn of the Headland, The Fearsome Touch of Death and Dig Me No Grave are among the 17 Gothic short stories in this collection. Ranging from horror to supernatural terrors and chilling tales of insanity and death, these stories reveal the extraordinary talent and range of one of short fiction's most accomplished writers. Robert Ervin Howard (1906-1936) was one of the founders of the sword and sorcery genre and an influential figure in fantasy fiction. He created a range of iconic characters including Conan the Barbarian, the sombre Solomon Kane and the loveable sailor Steve Costigan, yet he was an accomplished horror writer and close confidante of H. P. Lovecraft and his stories have enthralled and chilled readers for generations. Much of his childhood was spent travelling through the small towns of Texas and absorbing the culture of a growing society. Here is a disconcerting werewolf tale, the Wild West to Medieval France and to the fantastical setting of Hyperborea and other fantasy landscapes. 382pp in new full price paperback.

A wordsearch with plant families, crossword, word grid, space to draw your own tree shapes, dot-to-dot, Sudoku, mazes, and dozens of fantastic crosswords and wordsearches on such topics as leaf shapes, great gardens, sunflowers, famous botanists, fantastic forests and more. With solutions to all 136 puzzles and activities all inspired by the horticultural, scientific and conservation work of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. 256 page illustrated paperback. New full price publication.